Artifact: Augmented Runecraft, Magitech and Communication Utility Station (Armacus Types I & II)

Designation: Fixed Communication Magitech

Also known as scrying consoles, the first generation of Armacus, the Type I were bulky runic contraptions used in conjunction with Message relay obelisks to handle a large volume of [Message] spells. They were made through a collaboration with the Xzerion Institute and Academy for Magecraft after studying Antecessor obelisks which later came to be known as the Messay Relay Obelisks. Aside from their utility including real-time scribing of incoming [Message] spells via scrivening rune craft, the Armacus type I set the baseline for ship to port communications as aership travel continued to gain traction. However, this restricted the plied routes since the aerships had to pass by message relay obelisks to send and receive messages. To that end, the Armacus type II was invented to enable not only ship to port communication irrespective of route, but also ship to ship communication as well. Archive of Magitech Items, Artifacts and Relics, Zentrahl Institute for Magitech Studies

Sleep came to Amaya in fits and starts, not because of the cold, summer was just around the corner and the air would soon start to get warm. Under the circumstances she was grateful for small mercies. Freezing cold would be one less thing to worry about on the list of her predicaments, that is, if starvation did not get to her first.

Fortunately or unfortunately, their captors saw fit to give them the unwanted parts of the auroch they’d taken from their village. Most of it was charred and gristly; it hurt her gums trying to wrestle whatever bits of meat had stuck to the bone.

The village girl unsuccessfully strained to stay awake, observing the scenes around her. Keri was still leaning against her. The shallow rise and fall of her chest was the only indication she was in deep sleep. Amaya was rather envious that she could sleep under the circumstances, but pity and shame burned in her breast when she saw the faint tear lines marring her soot covered face. Keri too it seemed, was struggling with her own nightmares.

The village girl shifted a little, taking care not to jostle her friend using her shoulder as a makeshift pillow. Her bottoms hurt from sitting on the rough wood, her ankles still smarted from where she’d sprained them on the forced march and her cheek had a faint scar from where a goblin’s had backhanded her. She shuddered with unease, pursing her chapped lips as she remembered those who’d gotten it worse. Hadal had tried to stand up for her and gotten a broken arm for it and Remus―something worse might have happened to her.

Amaya scrunched her eyes shut as her eyes burned with tears for all the other people she’d never see again. She mourned their loss, sniffling as she wiped the snot off her face with her dirty tunic. The grime barely fazed her anymore―what difference would it make? She’d been breathing in the reek of unwashed bodies, blood and the Primals knew what else smelt on the vile goblins and orcs. Her nose was long dead at that point.

Amaya almost chuckled deprecatingly, thinking about how like her nose, she’d soon be very dead and nothing else would matter. Not the spring festival, not her plans of seeing the world outside her village. Never had they seemed so insignificant, especially in the face of that ancient construct that had awoken up with its buzzing and flashes of light. She’d felt her skin prickle and goosebump, as one of those symbols had lit up close to them. She remembered coming here with her father to fish and seeing the dead moss covered ruin, dead as the stone that built it.

Thinking of her father choked her throat with emotion as she thought about how he was never going to see her again. At least he’d gone away with the trade caravan, as well as her mother and little Ferina as well. She couldn’t bear the thought of harm coming to them. Amaya had made peace with the fact that she would no longer be going back to them; after all, foreboding stared at her in the face.

The shimmering veil on the large circular archway was gaining definition by the moment. She didn’t know what the strange people near the facade were all about since they’d been too far for her to hear them speak but she bet it was nothing good.

Her thoughts suddenly came to a grinding halt as she felt a cold and slimy feeling wriggle at her feet. She almost yelped in surprise but Keri smacked her palm over her lips just in time. Somewhere along the way, she’d suddenly woken up,

“ Ssshh, Amaya, it's just a fish,” the other girl whispered. By the guttering flame of a torch hoisted adjacent to their cage, she saw the fish, and a familiar mark. The other girl quickly grabbed it and hid it in her outer skirt before one of their watchers did a pass across from them. Their faces remained impassive, heart beats hammered against their chests as the goblin with jaundiced eyes rattled the bars of their cage with a rusty knife, all the while leering at them. They kept their gazes downwards from the goblin’s jaundiced eyes.

Only when did the goblin pass did they let out a breath of relief. No one stirred, not in the other cages and not outside their confinement. With their captor out of sight, Keri furtively pulled back her outer farming skirt and retrieved the large fish. It was about the size of a small cat. She moistened her lips, eyes darting around to see if anyone was watching.

“ Wait, Keri, look at the head,” Amaya frowned. ‘Why didn’t the fish struggle?’ She tried to parse through her sleep-addled mind. On the other hand, Keri’s crazed eyes of starvation were unmistakable, the girl was one bite away from scarfing the fish there and then.

“ Huh, isn’t that the White Wizard’s mark?”

Someone kicked at Amaya from behind and she almost jumped a foot in the air.

“ Oi, keep it down thar', people try’n to sleep,” an old woman whisper-shouted at them. She had her head covered in a burlap gotten from only the Primals knew where. Amaya scowled as she turned around. The fish suddenly burfed up all over Keri’s skirt.

“ Gah, nasty…” Keri hissed. It was then they saw the slime covered parchment and Amaya’s breath hitched. She grabbed for it, heedless of what it was covered in and was surprised when she found it heavier than expected. Wary of their watchers she met Keri’s eyes who intuited what she wanted to do and they huddled. They unfurled the parchment and found the palm sized orb inside.

“ What’zat?” Keri whispered as the older girl wiped the orb against her skirts to get rid of the liquid.

“ There are words on the parchment,” she remarked, uncrumpling it. Her eyes hurried and flitted down the scrawling, using the meager light of the torch that was throwing shadows against the water . Her heart stopped when she got to the end of the writing, it was almost smudged but her sharp eyes caught every.single.word.

“ Amaya…what’s it say?”

“ Hope,” Amaya said as she choked a sob. “ Remus is alive…” she said, her eyes staring across the small lake. She clutched the orb like something precious.

The time leading upto the clash crawled excruciatingly slowly. Everyone was waiting with bated for the signal that would kick off the hornet’s nest. Arthur was in the drachenflieger familiarizing himself with the craft’s controls, most of all the two yoke sticks that sat in holders. They were detachable, like VR controllers, yet locked onto their receptacles positions by some sort of magic.

It was as he was thinking that the craft was more extraterrestrial than arcane when it happened. The signal went off in tandem with the synth’s prompt to take flight coming from beside him. Numen was riding shot-gun. Left behind were Thaddeaus and Nora to coordinate the evacuation.

The transition from having the craft at rest to taking flight was instantaneous, as Arthur clipped the top of the trees in a burst of speed that left twigs and leaves fluttering in his wake.

Arthur flew over the lake’s surface as he saw the [Message] spell chatter on the scrying slate. His eyes were right ahead, where a bright beam from an Orb of Mana Beacon shone towards the sky, like a flare. An uproar was already rising up from the raider’s camp; vespertine were taking flight.

“[Seeker]; Long range Mana Seekers have been deployed.”

“[Quartermistress]; Adventurer party en route.”

“[Snow]; Villagers have been received at the first relay point,”

“[Kitten]; Volley Contact in five casions…three, two, one—Contact!”

Several streaks of light whizzed past the drachenflieger with the precision of a heat seeking airstrike. Just before they were half way across the lake, the arcane missiles fusilladed the gate platform, shredding everything within a few paces of the Orb of Mana Beacon. Seeing airstrikes in a movie and seeing it with one’s own eyes was almost as different as day from night.

Well, the platform being lit up bright as day threw shadows against the gate’s stone facade, and likewise threw goblins screaming into the lake. The wooden cage’s near the periphery were blasted into splinters that careened through the air trailing smoke before splashing into the water. A few smoking cinders plinked off the drachenflieger but they were barely a bleep on the craft’s [Aegis shield]. [Cloak] also remained unaffected, hiding the drachenflieger from prying eyes.

“ Father, vespertine to portside,” Numen warned, panning her Scan skill to its utmost.

“I see them,” Arthur said, turning the craft about by tilting the yokes. Then he saw the horde of vespertine flying towards the platform as they came responding to the fire still smoldering on the platform. Another horde broke off from the gorges to fan out no doubt ordered by whoever was in charge. Those were the drachenflieger’s targets―it was supposed to clear the way for the Stormbreaker’s landing.

Arthur brought his first weapons skill, [Weapon’s Lock] to the forefront of his mind. It could only work on wands, staves or other types of projectile weapons. The matrix wobbled on its first cast, but snapped into his conscious mind immediately after. He felt the skill inform his aim with subtle correctional nudges towards the batkin he wanted to shoot. When it hit dead center of the back of a vespertine wing screeching towards the forest, he felt the impulse telling him he got them in his sights.

“ Dropping [Cloak],”

“ [Cryo Lance], “ Arthur murmured. The orb at the center of the instrument console lit up a glacial blue. Then he willed the artillery spells to fire using the yoke stills like a remote wand―the vespertine never stood a chance. Half were mowed down by a salvo of ice before they realized he’d dropped in behind them. The rest tried to break away.

“[ Cryo Lance; Wide Area Barrage]!” Numen said coldly. She’d gotten hold of every spell within the memory crystal and now knew by name. If the last cast was a salvo then this one was like the sky was raining ice.

Arthur strafed the limping wing of vespertine from above, bloodying them and sending them crashing into the lake where the incoming rain finished off those who had survived the second onslaught. Blood, deeper dark than the surrounding water, spread over the surface of the lake. Arthur was grateful that it was still dark out as he detached his feelings of having drawn blood.

“[Cloak]” Numen murmured, hiding them once more.

“[Message]; Drachenflieger to all. Status?” Arthur asked.

“[Glasses]; Adventurers disembarking—moving to engage the stragglers.” Straight and to the point. That Guild education was not for nothing.

“ Skies all clear. More targets near the gates arch,” Numen replied.

“[Snow]; All villagers received and accounted for. Some are in a shape but should survive the second teleportation. Will join in after making sure they’re all tended to.

“[Seeker]; moving towards the gorge. There are vespertine in the sky, we’ll take care of this side. Please stick to what we agreed on. Take at least one alive; the rest stay dead―”

Arthur hummed an affirmative. That didn’t really translate to Message, there were no emojis for thumbs up or such, it was more for himself than anyone else. He took it upon himself to mop up the rest of the raiders and have Numen stop whatever arcanry had been put in motion at the gate.

Unbridled devastation. That was Zeur’s thought as they hunkered behind Salamon’s [Void Shield]. None of them were pure mages but they had scrolls and orbs. Well, the latter more than the former really.

Shielded by a wall of scintillating darkness, they only heard the pained shouts of the raiders as explosions rang out. Shrapnel was swallowed by the curtain of the void spell, shunting the attacks elsewhere. Only pure magic could dispel it.

Zsulfur had reacted timely, more so than him―somehow, the first artillery spells had been guided to the camp. How? He too wanted to know. Then not a few moments later, the scouts Zsulfur had sent to canvas the nearby forest for the culprit were shot out of the sky―by an aership that hadn't been there in the first place.

The timing between attacks was too convenient and too short―his anti-scrying wards had been breached long before they’d made their way there. And there were no signs of the captives. Months of planning had gone up in smoke.

‘Zsulfur you flying rat , that is exactly what they wanted. To draw us out.’ Zeur ground his teeth as he tried to keep his bubbling temper in check. He breathed in and exhaled. When the clamor of the first attacks had died down, left behind was the crackling of magical fire which was sputtering out, leaving scorch marks on the stone of the gate platform.

The tang of blood and other unmentionables stung at the roof of his nose―luckily, he had an iron stomach. Despite the chaos, Ismuth had never stopped working. It was do or die here, the Syndicate dictated that they were never to be caught―that was part of the test.

Only when did the smoke clear were they able to take stock. Most of the goblins— curse their curiosity, had been close to the orb and were outright mutilated by the first barrage. Those close were thrown into the water, a few were making their way back, soaking wet. Some orcs and hobs had also been caught up in the explosion but those only had flesh wounds―Mara and her lieutenants had survived.

Then they saw the aership land. Zeur swore at his lapse in attention for forgetting to detect the feedback from his wards. And there was another one right behind it. The first, a peculiar vessel without sails descended into the water using arcane fire to hold it aloft. Salamon thought it was fascinating. A [Rune Thief] through and through, he could tell which runecraft was worth stealing.

Then the adventurers disembarked―a smaller aership, suddenly reappeared overhead, as if coming from a mirage. There was a haze of mana around its artillery staves showing it was ready to cast at them— one was fire, the other was ice. Salamon cackled madly as if unhinged―he didn't get the youth’s obsession with artifacts.

“ Ismuth,”

“ Five pars give or take,”

“ Make it two,”

“ Gaaah, it's your funeral if we decohere into the aether,” the woman snapped back.

“ Mara,” Zeur called out, looking sidelong at the orc woman, who had her maul on her shoulder. “ Rally the rest of your people,”

The Orc woman grunted before bellowing in an ear splitting voice, “ Skullmongers! To me!” And the remainder of whatever had survived the initial barrage came to her. Limping or hobbling, even those injured dragged themselves to muster.

“ Zsulfur, the air is yours. You kin are useless…” Zeur scoffed. “ Balto and Salamon, make sure none of those adventurer’s interfere.”

“ Awh, I was itching for a fight,” Salamon whined. Balto just gave a non-commital shrug as he unsheathed his claymore in a ring of metal. The thing was as heavy as he placed it on the stone ahead of him like a guardian. Salamon just drew his dagger and took another spell orb in case he needed to shield Ismuth as she worked.

Zeur drew himself up, and patted the sword by his side, he too was itching for a fight. However he held himself back—he had to be conservative about it. There was no need to do the same thing he paid the Skullmonger raiders to do. They just had to serve as fodder―If they survived, well and good.

The Tronesian looked across the platform and counted the number of people standing there. There were no less than a dozen adversaries— six women one of them a stark contrast to the giantess standing besides her, two beastkin barbarians, a teenage archer. The smaller of the two aerships hovered behind them and out clambered―a short woman with silver hair? No. Girl was more apt.

Stranger still, she was armed with a single artifact. He got the barest glimpse of the masked man inside the vessel as it rose back into the air. He had a feeling he was the one being picked out from the rest.

Utter silence. Muscles bulging, noses flaring, the ring of metal―shoulders popping. Uneasy shuffling of feet. Smoke wafting lazily and then suddenly whipping under the gust of breeze. In between, there was a splatter of blood and gore from the first time blood had been drawn.

It felt like a moment stretched to eternity as the two groups stared down one another―tension. Did Numen feel it? Somewhat…but not in the way a flesh and blood person would perceive it. To her, nerves were like a stochastic array of events that she could not pin down.

Her computational matrices were working full tilt, snatching every single variable out of her field of vision―numbers, levels and weapons. Time was dilated to her thanks to [Vector Lock On], all she had to do to use the skill was to perceive someone as a target long enough for it to manifest and there she had her time.

Against the horde in front of her, she charted the path of least resistance to the gate’s archway. [Line of Evasion] was no help there since she was stationary and her targets barely moved too―she palmed the one Rune Wand she had at her side, and the dagger she’d been given by her father as a back-up weapon.

The drachenflieger was also in the range of [Gestalt], a few paces right behind her. Its purpose being to serve as a deterrent and to protect the Stormbreaker until the dwarven aership made its way there then they would get out of the battle field.

The villagers had to first be returned and kept away from the fighting―that would take a few pars at least. Five par’quarts at the most. The synth chanced a glance at the glow of mana slowly crawling towards the apex of the toroidal gate. Two conduits; one from the left and the other the right were climbing up like a slowly moving gauge as the gate continued to attune to the leyline.

The synth could feel the potency of it beneath her feet and even now, she was pulling up lots of it through the stone. Pre-dawn light was slowly peeking over the gorge―tension suddenly snapped from a screech of a vespertine as their impatience got the better of them. —They hated light.

Like an [Air Bullet], Numen burst into motion, augmenting her speed―her feet barely touched the ground. She was the first to meet the other side but― her first would-be assailant took an arrow between the eyes; they dropped like an unstrung puppet.

The synth used slumped over posture to boost herself in the air. She pirouetted through the air and then somersaulted over someone’s shoulder while drawing her rune wand with the same motion. She put a bullet in their spine. There was a barely audible Twoomfph! Like suppressed pistol fire.

Blood spurted on the other side of the hob’s throat, Numen kicked off the falling body. With the grace of a faerie spinning through the air, she lunged, corkscrewing dagger first into another hob. Her wand hand wasn’t idle either as the grunts of two hobs coming from the left and right were a retort to the singing of Sylfi.

She’d got out two shots in between her rotation in the air— one took a hit to the throat and another to the groin. And still she kept her eyes on the brute ahead of her, swinging a sword that was more bludgeon than blade at that point. Every chip, scratch or dent was caught crystal clear in her dilated time―he was too slow. By the time the downswing had reached where she was supposed to be, she’d already tumbled between his legs leaving him hamstrung for his trouble.

The whistle of an arrow and the thud of a body confirmed the kill―they barely had time to scream from severed tendons. The next opponent was warier, slowing their approach, eyes darting towards her dagger. It didn’t make a difference; as soon as they suddenly realized their mistake, she’d put one in his eye. He was dead before he hit the ground.

That was the first five casions―and it put Numen standing past the first wave of raiders. Behind her the battlefield had descended into a pell-mell of the screaming of metal, grunts of pains and swearing.

Arthur was almost pulling out his hair. Working his jaw, Arthur managed to speak over [Farspeak] as the confrontation turned to melee.

“ Numen, what the hell are you doing?” ‘You said a contingency plan, but this was not it!’

He pulled the drachenflieger to the air, interposing it between the Stormbreaker and the battlefield. The remainder of that vespertine’s minions were now wary and seemed to circle like vultures. One of the adventurers was on the promenade deck firing arrows and acting as a deterrent to anyone who would attack from the sky. Annika of the Hill Maiden’s was also providing cover fire for the synth―Arthur saw the women party for the first time and they were big! They looked like they could crush a melon by squeezing it in the crook of their arm.

“ Expediting our contingency,” Numen's voice came back. Five casions later and she’d already cut a line through the raiders. Arthur was barely surprised now; the synth was very efficient.

“ Do you need help?” Arthur inquired. He’d thrown a glimpse at the gate and in doing so, caught the next group of raiders at the back.He knew they were dangerous―he didn’t even need [Analyze] to tell him the threat posed by the man who’d briefly met his eyes across the battlefield.

There were individuals who had stood apart from the rest, five raiders remained around the conspicuously uniformed Void Syndicate―two were orc women who watched disinterestedly. They were the largest of their specimens, alongside one male. The rest of the orcs engaged in the fight were just the size of a big hob; still hulking brutes nonetheless. Then Arthur saw the black blur that shot away from the said group―

“ Haha, of course you’d want in on the action.” Arthur grinned wryly as his blood boiled. He entered a state of awareness that was as keen as a blade as the remainder of the vespertine hounded him from overhead and flew up to join the biggest of them all.

They were no doubt going to use gravity to drop on him; nevertheless, they could only go so high as the sun was about to rise. He tilted the drachenflieger skywards and primed the artillery spells.

“ Snow, how far are you?” he hailed Nora. There was no response. He tried again worriedly, “ Snow?” It was so unlike the dhampir to go silent like that. Maybe the gorge around was preventing the link from getting out of the area, after all, even the elder had been conspicuously absent after cracking the thing with the wards.

Also, the Sturmjager had been able to send back communication because it was still within the periphery of what Arthur called the telepsychic bubble. ‘Damn, will be a while―I hope she’s okay,’ he said as he tilted the craft to face upwards.

“ Quartermistress,”

“ Captain…”

“ Huh? Never mind…I’m going to try and keep the horde off you,” Arthur said as he squinted skyward. The vespertine were still wary, the din of fighting was still building up to a fever pitch. “ Acknowledged, we’re not undefended ourselves. Umbra's here with us, and a Sand Mage of sorts?”

’Huh? Sand?’ he left unsaid as he shook his head..“ Don't be a stationary target, the lake is big enough to fly around,” he added, turning his attention to the oncoming engagement. As if on cue, the vespertine started dropping on him. ‘Well, c’mon now, bring it on,’ It was such a pity there was no throttle right there and then, or the whining of afterburners would have been a good prelude to an aerial fight.

Zeur felt his skin break in goosebumps when the strange silver haired girl landed a few rows past the first wave. None of her confrontations lasted the entirety of a casion and she seemed almost unfazed by the violence around her as she appraised her surroundings. What must have been done to such a child to merit such a disposition? Was she trained in the art of war? Some military families were like that, ―him being a testament of that. But even then, she was too young.

“ Mara,” Zeur said. “ Send one of yours, capture the girl,” he sighed. ‘Maybe we can cut our losses with this, if we manage to get a high value captive.’ he palmed his sword. Before the orc woman could direct their lieutenant to go in―everyone let out a sudden flinch as the girl’s slightly glowing amber eyes passed over them.

Zeur thought it was a trick of the light, but everyone had seen it and felt it. His obfuscation pendant had grown warm against his chest—the girl had tried to gauge their levels. Whether she'd succeeded was another matter altogether—

“ She’s dangerous,” Balto’s rumble came from beside him. He made as if to move but the Tronesian man stopped him—

“Wait, she's only one girl. She seems like she was built for agility not endurance— let them tire her out.” Zeur remarked;If only he knew the girl wasn't human.

As for the rabble, the goblins were more or less giving the girl a wide berth. Goblins could not match her, not with their own height if she could go toe to toe with a hob. And certainly not that strange artifact that had efficiently dispatched some of their kin. Her attention seemed to settle on their group, then she started walking, jogging then breaking into a run.

“ Skullcrusher, do as the dark human says,” the orc woman snapped to one of her subordinates who’d been in some sort of food coma. He was the biggest hob of them all, a protuberant stomach being his prominent feature. Besides the tattered pelts, he had a patch-worked chain mail that seemed to be too small for his frame and his choice of weapon? A large flanged club bigger than his head.

The hob grunted, limbering up from his languor. His aura changed, the popping of bones sounded and suddenly, he was not a slothful hob with a hunched over posture. His stomach also seemed less prominent. He grinned, showing his yellow fangs and stepped forward, also transitioning into a jog and with a roar he took on a burst of speed that shook the ground with his huge booted feet.

‘Ah, it would be such a pity if she breaks a few bones,’ he thought, massaging the bridge of his nose. ‘ Barbaric raiders, they never know the meaning of moderation,’ He looked towards Salamon who was eyeing the girl’s advance with interest. ‘Well, I can just ask him to step in if it gets out of hand. And now, that strange craft,’ Zeur thought turning his gaze skywards―